Question Time review: buffoonery and the demeaning of tragedy

One can only hope that last night’s Question Time did not reflect the extent of debating skills in this country. IF it did, and it wasn’t just a classic lefty hijacking (as all episodes lately seem to be), God help our politics.

Look beyond the whinging: we don't need straight civil partnerships

Civil partnerships for the heterosexual? I ask you! But yes, this couple with too much time on their hands are going to court to try and get one.

Britain can ban Donald Trump, but it can't ban the Trump effect

Is there anything more embarrassing than the British Parliament indulging the nonsensical idea of banning US presidential hopeful Donald Trump from entering the country because he said something we didn’t like about Muslims?

Why should we save the NHS?

I have written before about striking doctors, and exactly what I think of the action they have taken. Though strikes were delayed and now taking place over January and February, my point remains. Hence I am not going to write another fully-referenced article, spelling out again what you can read for yourself if you want.
Instead, I want to ask a question. I want to ask this: why should we save the NHS?

I'm quitting my recreational drug use, and hope new guidance can help others manage theirs

So, we’re going to get some new guidelines from Dame Sally Davies, Chief Medical Officer. Shock of all shocks, they're widely expected to tell us that drinking isn’t good for us. Well wouldn’t you know! Nearly every choice we make involves a degree of robbing Peter to give to Paul – ask any smoker who banged on the weight when they tried to quit, or anyone walking around puffing and spluttering like lung cancer on legs insisting that smoking calms and relaxes them.

It's right to challenge Christian ideas of purity but wrong to deny the virgin birth

Some years ago, the BBC chose Christmas time to create a documentary arguing that Jesus was the result of Mary being raped. They did not bother to clarify the sources and only did so when responding to my indignant letter of complaint that, at the one time of year our faith takes centre stage, they felt it appropriate to question some of the most fundamental areas of belief for us – that Jesus, born in human flesh in the brutal and humiliating setting of a lowly stable, was the son of God, born to Mary as a miraculous intervention by almighty God above, beyond and outside of the norms of nature.
The BBC argued to me that, if Jesus were the son of a Roman soldier, or indeed the son of St Joseph, it didn’t necessarily alter his fully divine nature. Except, of course, that it would have, for as St John’s Gospel reminds us during the Christmas lectionary, he came about through the will of God, not the will of the flesh.

Fast forward over a decade, and it’s not the BBC airing such insensitive nonsense, but a man of the cloth: Rev. DR. Giles Fraser, who wrote a robust attack on the virgin birth narrative in his Guardian column this Christmas.

Cinema ban on Lord's Prayer advert is deeply offensive – here's why

I’m just trying to imagine what it might say and who might indeed have written the letter of complaint that the Digital Cinema Media agency expected to receive when it decided to ban in all major cinema groups the screening of a 60-second advert from the Church of England, showing groups of people in different circumstances, praying the Lord’s Prayer – a prayer that believers and non-believers alike will, undoubtedly, know so well from their school days.

Doctors' strike: it's patients who come a distant last

Forget greedy tube drivers striking despite being paid a small fortune and having the kind of holiday entitlement the rest of us can only dream of. Now, it’s one of the most respected groups in society that, under the leadership of militants, is set to strike – junior doctors.